Building Successful Teams through a Culture that Cares
Ask the HR Director in any company what the biggest buzzwords are today, and chances are that “company culture” will be in the Top Ten. But, what does it mean to have a positive company culture?
In an effort to adopt all things tech-startup-esque, many companies seem to believe that nurturing a positive culture is about providing ping-pong tables in the break room, bringing pets to the office, drink ups on a weeknight, monthly birthday celebrations, or paid time off to volunteer for your favorite cause.
Company Culture isn’t about Trending Activities
Unfortunately for the quick problem-solver, there’s more to a positive work culture than Pot-luck Fridays, contests or incentives to work out, and a company softball team.
What exactly is culture, and why does it matter so much when it comes to your job satisfaction? Professors Charles A. O’Reilly and Jennifer A. Chatman define culture as “a set of norms and values that are widely shared and strongly held throughout the organization.”
A company culture is about how the team feels about the work they’re doing and who they’re doing it for. For example: Is good work a product of pride and enthusiasm for the project at hand – a genuine desire to bring best self to the workplace? Or is it a result of fear created from witnessing a revolving door of team members who were, for reasons unknown to most, “not cutting it.”
Some leaders looking at the short-game rather than the long might say, “Who cares? As long as the work is done well, it doesn’t matter why.”
But in a job market like today’s, with more positions open than candidates to fill them, job satisfaction matters. Company culture, named more often than salary or benefits as a factor that tipped the scales, is often the very thing that makes a company one that talent flocks to, or what that they avoid.
What Today’s Talent Cares About
According to a survey of 1,000 U.S. employees conducted by 15Five, 81 percent of respondents would rather join a company that values open communication than other popular benefits.
In another example, a survey of 71,000 employees conducted by PayScale this year found that a company’s ability to communicate clearly about compensation is one of the top predictors of employee satisfaction. In the survey, 82 percent of employees who were paid lower than the industry average, but whose employer was open about their salary, were satisfied with their work. In comparison, employees who were overpaid, but didn’t have open conversations about salary were less likely to be satisfied.
Communication and transparency, then, rather than the salaries themselves, is what makes some companies stand out over others.
Among U.S. and Canadian employees surveyed by Virgin Pulse this year, 53 percent said interesting and challenging work is the number one reason they love their company. Money is obviously important, but it doesn’t mean everything to employees. After their financial well-being, 36 percent of professionals in the Virgin Pulse study said they want their employers to care more about their emotional health.
These aren’t one-time memos, or a new stand-up video game in the corner. These are behaviors and values that that are identified, cultivated, and central to actions. Toys are fast and cheap. Cultural change takes effort, and a little risk taking on everyone’s part (and we’re not talking about double-or-nothing at foosball).
Vibrant Cultures are about Safety, not Beer Pong Trophies
For all the trappings that we might have come to expect from celebrated media darlings over the last 15 years, a meaningful corporate culture isn’t always easy to identify.
When Google conducted a two-year study on team performance, the tech giant found that the highest-performing teams have one critical factor in common: psychological safety. Team members believed they wouldn’t be punished for disagreeing with the group, making a mistake, speaking their mind, sticking their neck out, or taking moderate risks. And, as it turns out, these are the very types of behaviors that often lead to important breakthroughs.
“There’s no team without trust.” – Paul Santagata, Head of Industry at Google.
Professor of psychology Barbara Fredrickson from the University of North Carolina has found that positive emotions like trust, curiosity, confidence, and inspiration broaden the mind and help us build psychological, social, and physical resources.
Dr. Fredrickson’s research suggests that we become more open-minded, motivated, persistent and resilient when we feel safe. Our capacity to solve problems, think critically and creatively, and to find humor in a situation increases with our underlying feeling of psychological safety with our team, our supervisors, and our organization.
When the workplace feels challenging and purposeful, but not threatening or overwhelming, teams can sustain the “broaden-and-build” mode; levels of oxytocin in our brains rise, evoking trust and trust-building behavior.
Google’s Santagata attests that this is a considerable factor in team success, “In Google’s fast-paced, highly demanding environment, our success hinges on the ability to take risks and to be vulnerable in front of peers.”
Competing with Culture: Meaningful Safety Nets & Encouraging Risk Taking
Cultivating a culture that values psychological safety begins with one very difficult and painful task for leaders: a willingness to be vulnerable, and not have all the answers.
For organizations that want to move past the trappings and slogans of “corporate culture”, there is real work to be done. It’s not easy, and it’s not overnight, but it is a journey you and your team can take together.
So, how can you encourage psychological safety on the team you lead?
1) See Employees as Humans, not Cogs in the Machine. Remember that your team has lives outside of the office, and that most are trying to maintain some balance in the increasingly difficult task of meeting the needs of work and family. Speaking to each as human to human recognizes the universal needs of respect, competence, social status, and autonomy.
2) Cultivate Empathetic Communications. Building a culture is about enrolling the hearts and minds of your team and stakeholders. Not all leaders are born with empathetic (or others-oriented) communication styles, but this can be learned and coached. A meaningful first step is could be learning about trauma-informed communications. While not everyone in your company has grown up with traumatic experiences in their lives, studies on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) suggests as much as 40% of your workforce experience the world through a trauma-influenced lens.
3) Try Collaborative Problem Solving. When we approach conflict as though we’re working together to solve a problem, we are collaborators, not adversaries.
a. We can avoid triggering a perceived hostility or a “fight or flight” reaction by first asking “how can we achieve a mutually desirable outcome here?”
b. Then, replace blame with curiosity. State the facts of the issue or problem to be solved. Express genuine curiosity about the reasons behind it.
c. Ask for solutions, modifying the outcome together. The people who are responsible for a problem often have the keys to the solving it.
d. If needed, ask directly “What would be your ideal scenario?” or “What do you think needs to happen here?” or “How can I best support you?”
4) Solicit Authentic Contributions. We know it when we hear it: someone has just gotten back from a great workshop and is now “doing it” to us. You can’t simply regurgitate your new learnings – you need to find your unique way of bringing big ideas to life, making them your own. But you don’t have to wait until you’ve fully embraced big ideas before sharing them:
a. As a leader, risk sharing big ideas you’ve been exposed to but maybe haven’t fully digested. This approach can serve two purposes: it models vulnerability for the team, but also shows how new information can be brought to a group as a whole for discussion without judgement.
b. Encourage team members to share what they’ve recently discovered, picked up in reading or podcasts, and are finding interesting. Don’t require them to process the application before sharing, but more importantly encourage folks to share what gets their wheels turning and their heart singing. Invite them to be their authentic self, and not just share what they think you want to hear.
c. Make your authentic culture a shared responsibility. While one person might lead the charge, the organization as a whole is always a mosaic of the personalities, passions, and energies of those involved. All members have a role in storytelling and sense-making, but also in challenging dated processes and values. When we each take accountability for a small shift, our collective culture reflects the result.
You don’t want to be a living version of a stock photo, and your employees probably don’t want to work there either.
Sometimes the brightest sparks come from the most casual (and non-work related) exchanges, but you must build a caring culture to gain access to the riskiest – and world-changing – ideas.
Until I came to IBM, I probably would have told you that culture was just one among several important elements in any organization's makeup and success — along with vision, strategy, marketing, financials, and the like... I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game, it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value. — Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. Former CEO of IBM
Employees who believe that management is concerned about them as a whole person — not just an employee — are more productive, more satisfied, more fulfilled. Satisfied employees mean satisfied customers, which leads to profitability. — Anne M. Mulcahy, CEO of Xerox
Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers. — Stephen R. Covey, Author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Why is culture so important to a business? Here is a simple way to frame it. The stronger the culture, the less corporate process a company needs. When the culture is strong, you can trust everyone to do the right thing. — Brian Chesky, Co-founder and CEO of Airbnb
I noticed that the dynamic range between what an average person could accomplish and what the best person could accomplish was 50 or 100 to 1. Given that, you're well advised to go after the cream of the cream. A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players. — Steve Jobs, Co-founder of Apple and former CEO
Every CEO is in fact a Chief Cultural Officer. The terrifying thing is it’s the CEO’s actual behavior, not their speeches or the list of values they have put up on posters, that defines what the culture is. Without these four powers (Hiring, Firing, Promoting, Punishing) any employee at the company is along for the ride in a culture driven by someone more powerful than they are. — Scott Berkun, Author and speaker